The True Nature of the Obama Regime
by lizard
This post is going to be a sort of potpourri of disgust directed toward the despicable Obama regime, comprised of some recent headlines people should be aware of.
One of the big stories getting attention over the weekend was a story from the journalist James Risen about the mercenary group formerly known as Blackwater:
Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports.
While the story is important, it should be noted we’re lucky to even have James Risen reporting on this, considering if the Obama administration had its way, Risen would already be in prison. Here is an article with the most recent developments in that case and a little background for context. From the link:
Risen is the author of the 2006 book “State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.” A chapter of that book detailed a CIA plan to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Prosecutors believe that Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former Central Intelligence Agency operative charged with leaking classified information, gave Risen information that was used for this chapter.
Because of this chapter in Risen’s book, this Pulitzer-winning journalist has become just one of many media targets in the Obama regime’s war against “leaks” (the one’s not purposely leaked by his administration to further political agendas).
One of the individuals who used to have to deal with the media on behalf of the Obama regime is the former press secretary, Robert Gibbs. Well, he has a new job now, and that job will entail an attack on teachers and the unions that protect them:
While it is not surprising that those who worked for a corporate Democrat like President Barack Obama have moved on to shilling for Big Business after they leave the White House, usually the opportunism is less crass than this. Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s former press secretary, has signed on through his public relations firm to lead a national PR campaign to destroy teachers unions.
Incite Agency, founded by both Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt, will manage a nationwide public relations campaign to build support for lawsuits against teacher tenure, seniority, and other job protections won by teachers unions. If Incite Agency’s campaign is successful and the cases are won in court, teachers unions would be crippled, if not obliterated – opening the way to privatizing public schools and making public education a hollow commitment for millions of American children.
Yeah for corporate Democrats! And after today’s anticipated Supreme Court ruling, unions will become even more crippled:
On Sunday night, the leaders of America’s public-sector labor unions will sleep fitfully, if they manage to sleep at all.
The source of their anxiety — brewing now for months — is the Supreme Court’s impending decision in Harris v. Quinn, expected to be handed down Monday morning alongside Hobby Lobby, the more high-profile birth control case. In a worst-case scenario for labor and the left, Harris v. Quinn has the potential to cripple public-sector unions.
On its surface, the case deals with home care workers in Illinois who care for the disabled. The plaintiff, Pamela Harris, serves as the caretaker to her son Josh, who suffers from a rare genetic syndrome. The elder Harris receives Medicaid funds to do so and essentially functions as a state employee.
Many state-supported home care workers in Illinois are represented by the union SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana. Under the contract between the union and the state, all home care workers covered under the contract are required to pay a fee to SEIU to cover the expenses associated with bargaining, whether or not they want to be union members.
This arrangement avoids what unions commonly refer to as freeloading — that is, benefiting from the union’s work without helping to underwrite it. Since unions have to represent all the employees in a particular bargaining unit, they commonly seek requirements in their contracts that all workers pay such “fair share” fees.
The Supreme Court has already affirmed that workers can be required to pay fees to public-sector unions to cover bargaining costs, though not political activities, in its 1977 Abood case.
But with Harris v. Quinn, Abood could be turned on its head.
Moving on to killing Americans with drones, a few weeks ago the infamous drone memo was finally released for public consumption:
The memo authorized the U.S. military or the CIA to carry out a strike against Awlaki as long as they gave assurances there was no alternative.
“In the present circumstances, as we understand the facts, the U.S. citizen in question has gone overseas and become part of the forces of an enemy with which the United States is engaged in an armed conflict; that person is engaged in continual planning and direction of attacks upon U.S. persons from one of the enemy’s overseas bases of operations; the U.S. government does not know precisely when such attacks will occur; and a capture operation would be infeasible,” Barron wrote.
“At least where, as here, the target’s activities pose a ‘continued and imminent threat of violence or death’” to Americans, the killing would be considered a lawful act of war, the memo concluded.
Jailing journalists, destroying teachers unions and killing Americans with drones isn’t enough for this regime. Faced with a humanitarian crisis at our southern border, the president (who is deporting immigrants at a faster rate than his predecessor) is asking Congress for a cool 2 billion to speed up deporting thousands of children back to the various hells they were desperately trying to escape:
The Obama administration will go to Congress Monday seeking an emergency $2 billion appropriation for stepped-up jailing and deportation of immigrants, particularly the wave of child migrants in south Texas, White House officials have revealed.
The unnamed officials told the New York Times Saturday that Obama would send a letter to Congress Monday about the new enforcement actions against immigrants, to be followed by a detailed request for funds a week later.
Obama will seek stronger enforcement powers, proposing new authority for the Department of Homeland Security to speed up the screening and deportation of child migrants from Central America.
These are just a smattering of headlines from the last few weeks that expose the true nature of a regime Democrats have been enabling for 6 years. Failing to acknowledge how deeply disturbing Obama’s policies are increases the chance that whoever takes the helm of the Democrat party for the 2016 presidential run will continue these terrible authoritarian trends.
June 30, 2014 at 7:59 am
It shouldn’t cost $2 billion to open the gate and let these refugees stand in Mexico.
June 30, 2014 at 10:20 am
I find a high percentage of your comments to be useless. I suggest redirecting some of the energy you spend incessantly commenting on Missoulian articles and Indy articles and blog posts to reading up on these issues.
June 30, 2014 at 10:37 am
Gosh darn, kiddo, we call it social media marketing, something you unfortunately are incapable of doing because you use a pseudonym.
I also find it ironic you’d have qualms with my using a newspaper. Isn’t the free flow of ideas something you encourage here on your site?
I’m also sorry if my idea to save $2 billion and whatever interest’s tacked onto it doesn’t meet your high standards. Oh well, can’t win ’em all.
June 30, 2014 at 11:46 am
my “qualms” is with the quality of your content. you don’t have an “idea” to save 2 billion dollars, you have an uninformed knee-jerk reaction to a humanitarian crisis that won’t be addressed by putting children fleeing violence on the Mexican side of the border.
June 30, 2014 at 12:48 pm
Greg, your so called “idea” is useless and stupid, in my humble opinion.
Why is it useless and stupid? Because the notion that we can dump thousands of children from numerous countries across the boarder onto Mexico is both genocidal and plainly morally wrong.
It would also then send a loud and clear message to everyone that the mass neglect and abuse of children is OK with both Greg Strandberg as well as the US government.
While I would predict that the US government wouldn’t be so useless and stupid, it’s clear that you in fact are, at least by your own words.
What was it Forrest Gump said, “Stupid is as stupid does?”
I think you are confusing “uninformed opinion” with
‘idea.” They usually turn out to not be synonymous.
Again, that’s just my opinion, informed by what you wrote.
‘
June 30, 2014 at 1:30 pm
Is it possible for a non-corporate Democrat to win at any level? Or is the system now so rigged that only those whom corporations OK can run and win?
If candidates who would work for ordinary people instead of Big Money came forward would we recognize them? Or is fact-based cynicism so deep and wide that we wouldn’t?
Maybe more people need to drop dead in the street (from poor health care, homelessness, environmental toxins, violence born of desperation) before anything can be done. What this “anything” might be is a mystery to me.
June 30, 2014 at 1:37 pm
OT. The latest SCOTUS decision has changed my opinion on voting in the senate race. It’s crucial that the next SC nominee, is her or she is on the side of women, be confirmed. That means, as much as it pains me, I’ll hold my nose and vote for Walsh. We know that Daines, if elected, would vote against confirming such a nominee.
June 30, 2014 at 1:40 pm
I think this comment answers the question you posed in your first comment, and the answer is no, it’s not possible.
June 30, 2014 at 2:18 pm
I thought it might be instructive to read what kind of ideas Greg Strandberg supports. here is his response to one of the stupidest comments I’ve ever read from “walter12” on a story about jail being a luxury for homeless people:
labor camps, huh. didn’t the Germans try that out awhile ago?
June 30, 2014 at 2:30 pm
Must be a slow day at the nonprofit. World doesn’t need saving today?
June 30, 2014 at 3:03 pm
hoping deflection will distract from your support of forced-labor camps?
June 30, 2014 at 3:10 pm
I wouldn’t dare to be so naive.
Look, last summer we read each week of business complaining and then other people complaining, all about transients and homeless people downtown. Something is tried, a ban, and it’s challenged and fails and we’re back at square one.
Winter, End of Act 1
Now we’ve got spring and summer rolling in again, and with it the same problems that we had downtown last summer, although this time I don’t see as much reporting on it.
When there is reporting, such as in the Missoulian, ways are often thought up to solve difficult issues. In this case we’re comparing deterrent methods for either preventing homeless people from coming to Missoula or getting rid of those that are here and causing problems downtown.
Making bums work seems like a great deterrent to me, since it’s something they don’t want to do. It’s clear from many Missoulian comments that people don’t like the idea of these folks sitting in jail doing nothing. Wouldn’t having them pick up trash along the highway or along the river be a better option, especially since we’re spending money to do that already?
So these are the things I think about, and if that offends you, like I said earlier, oh well, you can’t win ’em all.
June 30, 2014 at 3:26 pm
so you get your info from the Missoulian (1st problem) and you think 66 comments are representative of a town with over 70,000 people (2nd problem).
I guess that explains why your comments are useless.
June 30, 2014 at 6:53 pm
“Making bums work seems like a great deterrent to me”.
Funny that. To me it sounds a lot like slavery.
June 30, 2014 at 7:17 pm
That’s nice.
June 30, 2014 at 7:27 pm
In all fairness: A couple of decades ago, (maybe 3) I lived on Pine street about a block and a half off of Higgens without a working car. It might shock you to know that there were ‘bums’ and panhandlers even back then in the Jurassic. Many if not most were homeless and/or mentally ill. I couldn’t go to Wardens, or the Ox or even walk to work without being so dreadfully accosted. But I came up with a radical solution to the “PROBLEM”. I ignored them, I told them “sorry, no”, I gave them change when the mood suited me. Every once in a while, I was an asshole and told them to ‘get a job’ before walking off in a huff. What I did not do is be afraid of them.
Ya’see, even back then I had this inkling that the point is to live your life and let others live theirs without thinking that their issues constituted a problem that I had to solve. To do so, as Lizard so adequately pointed out, is completely useless. Greg, you’re being useless. Stop being useless, please.
July 2, 2014 at 10:11 am
Earlier this year, there was discussion in the community about a work in lieu of fines program for repeat offenders. The discussion occurred in the context of the problems downtown and the aggressive solicitation and pedestrian interference ordinances.
I can see why people might find this distasteful, but I think comparing it to Nazi concentration camps is overstating it a bit. I don’t see much difference between a work in lieu of fines program and the community service sentencing we already do.
I did not support the AS and PI ordinances because we have laws against fighting, urinating and defecating in public, and disorderly conduct on the books. So how do you enforce the law when fines and jail time are not deterrents for the relatively small population of repeat offenders?
The fact that I am partially agreeing with Greg sickens me…how about forced labor for delusional internet gadflies?
July 2, 2014 at 11:29 am
One problem with work-in-lieu-of-fines programs is that the “worker” may be a mentally ill, addicted person. Or a registered violent or sexual offender. Is the city ready to take on the cost and liability issues of what the consequences of the “worker’s” behavior might be? Feed and bathe them, give them clean clothes so the city’s “workforce” is presentable? Transport them to and from the workplace? Insure them and cover their worker’s comp?
There’s a lot of distance a mentally ill, addicted person needs to travel from homelessness to productive member of society. And few make it on their own. The resources that the city would need to expend to manage it’s slaves would be put to much more productive use finding ways to build transitional housing and treatment facilities, and vocational rehab.
July 2, 2014 at 11:48 am
All very good points. There are no easy answers to this problem. I agree that the rehab-oriented solutions you suggested are generally better solutions, but I wonder how effective they would be with folks who are not committed to bettering themselves or their situation?
I think to some extent the aim of the work in lieu of fine programs might be to voluntarily relocate problem individuals rather than rehab them. Whether that is moral or not is of course up for debate.
July 2, 2014 at 2:32 pm
The Portland Hotel Society in Vancouver B.C. provides a tested model that is effective and affordable:
“From the perspective of the Portland Hotel’s public-sector funders, the cost of the program is considerably less – and its outcomes much better – than allowing people to live on the streets with frequent contact with hospitals, police, the justice system and jails. A major reduction in time that residents spend in hospitals and prisons is a direct outcome of the program.”